Until now, electric meters have been primarily electro-mechanical devices. These traditional type meters have slowly evolved, through many generations of improved devices, addressing such issues as reduction of friction losses in the meter, calibration accuracy, maintenance, tamper proof construction modes, and surge protection and detection. Many other incremental improvements have been made in electro-mechanical devices, until the recent meters are about as efficient and trouble free as an electro-mechanical meter can be.
A programmable electric energy meter has recently been patented and is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,298,839, but this meter cannot be selectively enabled, and disabled, as to its several functions by an external device. In this sense, the meter described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,298,839, is not even programmable, at least not as respects the device proposed herein.
Applicants have designed and developed a solid-state Programmable Demand Register.TM. (PDR.TM.) which is so much a departure from the traditional electric meter that it does not even employ the familiar dials on the register face. For use in programming, and/or reading functions in conjunction with the PDR.TM., a Programmer/Reader.TM. (P/R.TM.) is proposed and for reading and resetting the PDR.TM. a Billing Period Resetter (BPR) or a BPR-1 is proposed.